That’s about the words that was said to me Friday night when I wanted to shoot some photos during a fight between two fan groups during the Danish Ice Hockey Cup final (not the championship game).
A scrum broke out during the second intermission. A group of fans from Roedovre (the team I covered) was standing outside the arena talking, drinking, having a cigarette or whatever and a group of fans from Odense was standing 15-20 feet from them. They were yelling stuff back and forth and one of the guys from the Odense group wanted to get a hold of the Roedovre fans. Security personnel kept the guy away but it didn’t keep a fight from breaking out. A cup of beer flew through the air and all the beer plus the plastic container hit a girl square in the face. Right after that a group of Odense fans started chasing down the Roedovre fans who were running for their lives.
I followed the people and got my camera ready to shoot some photos of the fighting when I was approached by to guys who ran past me. They turned around stopped me and said something like “We’ll kick your ass and break your fucking camera if you take any pictures”.
Seeing how they basically jumped innocent people, I decided not to test them and kept away. It was dark so I wasn’t able to just shoot the stuff from a distance.
After the game was done, more fighting broke out outside the arena. On my way back to my car carrying two cameras, my 300mm and a bag over my shoulders I met up with a colleague. He told me to start taking pictures of all the stuff happening. Two police officers and one of the security personnel from the arena was standing right next to us and the security guy told me that “if you take a single picture I’ll trash your camera!”.
I’m baffled by this. The police officers did nothing. NOTHING. I’m in my full right to shoot whatever I want in the street basically. Being a member of the danish union of Journalists I have a press card stating that I can actually get behind police lines. Not that there were any police lines or anything, but he couldn’t keep me from doing my job. This episode has been reported to the association of sports journalists by the way. I can’t do anything about fans telling me stuff like that. But he was security and had no right to keep me from doing my job, which was basically what he did …
With so many people in the streets and my car still over 100 meters away I didn’t want to just put down all my gear to shoot some photos though I almost did. I wanted to shoot a photo of the security guy just to document what he looked like, but they were busy arresting people and what not.. So I didn’t take any pictures..
As a guy told me….
“The most important thing is that you walked away from it with no broken bones and your gear still intact. Nobody says thank you after words anyway.”
